Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.
— James Madison
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.
The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
